Elegy for the Star Light
by neilg
Summary: 5th Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa. Little introspective piece mostly from Tegan's point of view concerning things just after the events of Earthshock that is, Adric's death, for those who didn't know...


The wind made a mournful sound. Like a pack of wolves, it whined and bayed around them, snapping at their heels as they made their way slowly through the snowstorm, the dark cliff of the mountain rising sheer alongside.

Tegan strained to glance up, arching her whole body so that the huge snorkel hood she wore was pointing to the sky. Through the narrow fur-lined snout she could make out a distant patch of brilliant blue obscured by curling ribbons of powdered ice. She looked down again, catching a mouthful of wind and sleet, like a slap in the face, and had to turn away. Every time she looked to find the others or see where she was, it was like being hit by a freezing cold hand. She called out,

"Doctor!" her voice sounding loud to her in the hood. She turned again, searching her surroundings, wincing at the slap, and found the nearest familiar form staggering ahead in its bulky fur-lined skins.

She hurried up alongside it.

"Doctor! How much further do we have to go?" she yelled, the wind ripping the question from her mouth and hurling it into the blizzard. The figure bent towards her, gesturing, and she repeated, more clearly, "How... much... further!"

The figure turned, angling its furry snout and she heard a voice, as if from far away,

"Yes, it is, isn't it? Very bracing!"

"How much..." she tried again, pulling herself closer to the figure, grabbing the rim of his hood like it was the edge of a giant ear, " How much further!"

The figure gestured, an oversized nod that set the great hood bobbing frantically,

"Not far now, I promise," It thrust out a stubby-looking arm, the fur-cuffed mitten pointing ahead, "Just over that slope!"

The Doctor strode away, leaning forwards into the sleet. Tegan was aware of someone else beside her. Another bulky coat, another fur-lined snout pointing at her, in its depths a glimpse of a smiling mouth. The mouth said something that she couldn't make out over the sounds of the wind, then the figure reached over and patted her arm before turning and walking away.

Tegan watched the figure go.

She stood in her skins, cuffed and batted by the wind, the whiteness at the end of the snout glaring but distant like a view through a window pane.

She was warm. The clothes were warm. The fur-lined boots and fur-lined gloves, the pale sweet-smelling leather was snug about her arms and legs and close on either side of her face, stiff and resilient.

She moved her eyes, trying to peer around the edge of the fur, then turned her whole body, swivelling to look behind, back the way they had come, where the winding path at the edge of the rock-face ran down its gradual slope, it's origins obscured by plumes of flurrying snowflakes as large and light as feathers, the marks of their footsteps rapidly vanishing.

There was nobody else.

She found herself frowning, deep inside her snug warm cowl, momentarily confused by and then annoyed at her sense of expectation.

Of course there was nobody else...

...

She had seen:

The sudden flash of the asteroid penetrating the upper atmosphere, the pressure waves radiating out in a series of pale concentric circles as cotton candy clouds condensed in the rapidly rising heat and then were vaporised. A dark spot, like a blemish on the skin of an apple, gradually spreading like a malevolent rot blooming across the vivid surface of the sphere.

And all the while, the silence.

And after that, the deeper silence.

...

Suddenly, they were away from the blizzard, in a rocky bay scooped out of the mountainside. Tegan pulled back her hood, breathing deeply as though she had just emerged from underground. The air was cold but clean. She tried to get the heady scent of damp leather from her nostrils.

It was still freezing here but, somehow, the bay contrived to seem cozy, sheltering them from the worst of the storm that raged behind. A few snowflakes drifted in the air, gently settling at their feet in a clean white carpet. It was strangely quiet, bleak, and Tegan was reminded of the tunnels they used to use to enter the fuselages of waiting planes; it was a transitionary space, preliminary, unconsidered yet essential...

There was a round hole in the ground at the back of the bay. An iron guard ringed it and iron steps spiralled down into the darkness. The Doctor was already climbing onto the first rung, a brittle metallic clang ringing out as he stepped down. Tegan scowled over at him,

"Is that where you're taking us? Down there?"

The Doctor's bright, unhooded face looked up, smiling sweetly,

"Not far now. Come on."

Tegan muttered, ostensibly to herself,

"Is there a reason why we had to walk through a snow storm just to get here?"

Nyssa moved passed her towards the stairway,

"The Doctor says that he didn't want the TARDIS' time field to cause any interference in the area."

"Do you know where we're going, then?" called Tegan after the girl who was standing at the top of the staircase now, her hand on the metal rail. Nyssa looked up and smiled and answered brightly,

"I've no idea," and stepped down into the darkness adding as she disappeared from view, "But I'm sure with the Doctor with us we'll be safe."

Tegan raised her eyes as she moved towards the stairs,

"Since when has that ever been a guarantee?"

...

"It's not so terrible! Remember, that wasn't the Earth as you know it. It was before your species had even evolved! Nobody died!"

"One person died."

"I know, Tegan... but, but, as the Doctor said, many more were saved!"

"He did say that, didn't he? Yeah, it was a noble sacrifice. Just like the Doctor said."

"It had to happen, though. You do see that, don't you? It was a part of History."

"Yes, we mustn't change History, now, must we?"

"Tegan, I think you're being very unfair. It wasn't the Doctor's fault."

"No, Nyssa, it wasn't. He's only here to pick up the pieces. Isn't he?"

"I think you're being very unfair if you're blaming the Doctor."

"Maybe I am."

"He does have feelings for what's happened, too, you know? Hmm?... Tegan?"

"What?"

"Please, be fair."

"Why do they have to die, Nyssa?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"Why does someone always have to die?"

...

The staircase was a spiral of functional stainless steel that rattled and swayed slightly as they moved down it. The tube they were descending in was metal-clad and there were lights set into glazed recesses in the wall, one every full turn, illuminating their route with a bleak and unwelcoming bluish glow. It was cool here but not as cold as outside. Melt water from the entrance above trickled down the central stair column, dripping from step to step with a soft pattering sound.

Tegan was close behind Nyssa. She could see the girl's mop of dark curly hair bouncing just below her. The Doctor was out of sight around the ceaseless curve ahead of them but she could hear his footsteps, leading them on with their usual confident determination.

She called out to him, more to break the pattern of the sounds that they were making than anything else,

"I suppose we're going to meet whoever built this staircase?"

The Doctor's reply echoed from around her feet,

"I sincerely doubt it, Tegan. The people who built this staircase abandoned the Research Station several hundred years ago. Just before the planet's sun began its gravitational collapse."

"This is a dying planet?" asked Nyssa in that inconsequential tone of hers that seemed capable of turning even the most profound of conversational topics into an exchange of simple facts.

"Oh, it has a while left yet before its atmosphere condenses and then boils away into space..."

"Ah great," muttered Tegan beneath her breath, "We're on a sight-seeing trip to planet Morgue..."

"The station still maintains some sort of power source, though?" observed Nyssa tapping one of the lamps as she stepped passed. The Doctor's voice came from below,

"Geothermic energy, Nyssa. Highly efficient and practically limitless. It's something I've tried to get your Government to think about as a serious alternative to fossil fuels, Tegan."

Tegan's ears pricked at the sound of her name, but she hadn't really been listening. She was aware now that they were some way down below the surface although she imagined she could still hear the howl of the wind. The air was still, here. Stale, almost. As if they were descending into a tomb.

"Oh yes," the Doctor's chatter continued, "There are power reserves enough to keep this place heated and lit until the end of the world."

"Which, judging by the climactic deterioration we've witnessed out there," declared Nyssa calmly, "Won't be very long."

"Actually, about two hundred years," the Doctor's reply came bouncing up to them. There was a hint of gleeful grin in it.

Tegan scowled at the disembodied voice ahead,

"I hope whatever's down here is worth the journey, Doc–"

She fell silent suddenly as she found herself stepping from the stairway and onto a flat open floor. The stairway had finished. The Doctor and Nyssa were in front of her. They were leaning forward over the top of a low steel barrier, staring out towards what appeared to be a black curtain. There were no lights here, what light there was shone dimly from the doorway behind and suddenly Tegan became aware that she was standing at the edge of some vast and empty space, so huge that its edges could not be sensed.

She moved to Nyssa's side at the edge of the metal wall. It was cold as ice under her gloveless hand. There was a sudden feeling of freezing cold air against her face and her breath rolled in a pale mist from her mouth as she spoke,

"Where are we?"

The Doctor leaned forward and looked across at her with a grin,

"It's what I wanted to show you."

"Well, I can't _see_ anything–" started Tegan belligerently but her voice wavered and she fell quiet as her dark adjusting eyes began to eek out a little detail from the gloom. She could make out a flat surface ten, maybe more, metres below, the light from the stairwell just dimly reflecting off of it. "Is it water?" she breathed, uncertainly. The Doctor smiled again,

"Bravo, Tegan," and gazed towards the dark bulk as he elaborated, "Nine hundred thousand cubic metres of distilled water, to be precise."

"An underground lake?" asked Nyssa.

"Man made!" The Doctor exclaimed, "The cave itself is natural, carved out of the marble strata by glacial rivers, but they constructed inside it a series of ovoid basins each lined with octagonal panels of carbon."

"It's a swimming pool?" quizzed Tegan, still trying to make out something more interesting in the blackness.

"No, Tegan," the Doctor scolded briefly, "It's..." he paused, looking thoughtfully ahead of him into the featureless pitch, "It's a giant ear."

"An ear?"

"Yes, Tegan."

Nyssa asked, with her usual unflappable calm,

"What is it listening for, Doctor?"

She was treated to one of his warm indulgent smiles that flickered and vanished like a candle flame as, more sombrely, he replied,

"The death of a star."

He moved away, along what Tegan could see now was a narrow path skirting the smooth side of the cavern. A shaft of darkness marked the end of it where the wall jutted out, but at some sort of movement from the Doctor, a sign, the press of an unseen button, a bar of pale light appeared in the shadow, growing wider until a door had opened in front of him. He stepped on through and they followed.

It was a small room, its steel-clad walls bejewelled with dead machinery, blank screens, vacant readouts, switches and buttons that the Doctor fondly touched as he talked, like an archaeologist handling the flint and wood artefacts of a primitive civilisation,

"They built it to study an apparent surge of muon quarks that had been identified in several particle laboratories across the planet. A great, collaborative effort at the time. Every nation making a contribution."

"Muons are Quantum elementary particles, Tegan, part of the Lepton family," explained Nyssa (As if, thought Tegan as she was being spoken to, it would make any difference to her understanding of what the Doctor was talking about), "They are very difficult to study without advanced technology. They can pass through an entire planet full of matter without interacting with anything else."

"Fortunately, the people who built this place were good at detecting Muon particles," continued the Doctor, "They hoped to detect Muon activity in these devices and discover the origin of the apparent upsurge." The Doctor pulled a lever on one of the bristling control surfaces. There was a sudden hum of energy and lights flickered about them, constellations of electronic activity coursing through the reactivated circuitry. Outside, Tegan heard a series of heavy metal clunks and she became suddenly aware of light beyond the door.

"Unfortunately," the Doctor continued as he walked passed Tegan, "They succeeded."

He left the room and they followed.

The cavern was lit up now, its distant illuminated walls glimpsed dimly from where they stood on the gantry. But, despite now being visible, some of its intimidating mystery had been diminished. Metal scaffolds were slung across the glassy surface of the lake, ladders and metal walkways bristled over the cavern walls, and seemed to make the place appear more mundane and utilitarian than Tegan had begun to imagine. Hints of the submerged, carbon-clad basins could be made out along the sides of rock, but nothing showed across the black surface of the water or in its sepulchral depths.

The Doctor was leaning over the balcony, studying the sheer dark surface below. He continued speaking, the normally bright tones of his voice subdued by a sombre introspection,

"They were able to confirm the increase in Muon activity, and were even able to establish its origin, although what they found was not what they had started looking for..." he sighed, directing a plaintive smile towards Tegan, "It was an immense surprise to them. Their understanding of the principles of nuclear fusion up to that point had suggested that their system's star would continue to burn brightly for a million, million years into their future. They couldn't have imagined that a star was capable of spontaneously and suddenly destroying itself."

A moment of silent thought seemed to grow around the Doctor, spreading out like a kind of darkness and enveloping the two girls with a chilling embrace as he went on,

"The best estimates of their best experts gave the planet four hundred, possibly five hundred years of habitable existence before the effects of a diminishing sun were felt. It's surprising how short a space of time that can seem in context."

"I'm sure Traken would have been glad of such a forewarning," muttered Nyssa almost privately. She looked up towards the Doctor, "What happened when the people of this planet learned about their fate?"

The Doctor smiled a sad smile, and continued, his soft voice echoing like a chanted prayer in the vaulted space,

"Some panic followed the initial discovery, a few Governments were toppled, the odd national economy crumbled. A pervading sense of chaos prevailed for a period but, surprisingly quickly, order was restored. Civilisation emerged triumphant. They began to plan. The fleet of seven arks that eventually left the planet's surface, forty-seven years after the day the Muon shower was detected, carried nearly one million of the planet's inhabitants away from their parochial home and into the far reaches of their galaxy. People from all walks of life, all nations, all colours and creeds, journeying from the ancient womb of their planet out to a new life amongst the stars. The beginning of an odyssey that will see their kind eventually come to inhabit every quarter in this sector of the Universe."

"One million out of six billion doesn't seem a very high proportion," said Nyssa matter-of-factly, but Tegan was no longer listening to the voices, she was staring at the dark water, the swelling buzzing dark water that was, she was suddenly aware, full of more things than she ever could have imagined or seen or sensed, vast subtle things so subtle they made barely the slightest of ripples on a lake full of liquid, so vast they froze oceans.

The decisions we make, she thought. The moments, the fractions of moments we make them in, and the impact they have, the huge repercussive impacts. The shock-waves. Thoughts are like particles, whizzing through the atmosphere. Occasionally, they strike and sometimes they cause changes, and sometimes they pass through everything, burning away like meteors in an atmosphere and hardly seem to touch a thing. Sometimes, its where they strike that matters. Sometimes, it's where they come from.

She felt a hand on her arm, Nyssa's small fingers squeezing her through the thick leather of her winter coat. They were leaving, the Doctor leading them back towards the stairs and the long climb back up to the cold wind. Tegan shivered. She wasn't looking forward to the walk across the snow. But at least the TARDIS would be warm inside again.

She turned, following Nyssa towards the stairwell, then stopped as something caught her eye from the depths of the lake.

Something had glittered briefly in the waters, leaving a faint trail in the black depths that appeared to drift across her dark-adjusted retina. A flash of star-light shining momentarily before becoming subsumed into the darkness.


End file.
